Page 76 of 312

Inspired to a good life

June 5, 2014 / Michele Minehart

Ten years ago, when she walked down the aisle, Angie wanted tears – and it worked. I believe J Mac’s first words were, *deep breath* “whew!” As they have made their life together, Angie and Chad continue to live in that same sort of awe-inspiring intensity.

What cute kids!

I’ve never seen anyone aspire to such the non-American dream. To them, 2.5 kids, a white-picket fence and high-paying 9-5 careers sounds miserable. And they live like they believe it. They scrape the edges of their finances to make a non-traditional school a possibility for their kids. They’ve discovered true give-and-take community within their church that breathes life into them, where serving goes beyond responsibility. Their lack of trust for our food system provoked them to find outlets for local and healthy options, so much so that Angie was only going to a traditional big box for toilet paper and diapers.

Don’t tell them “that’s just the way it is.” They’ll find a way to buck that system.

And I see that same ferocity of carving out a way of life with meaning and intention in their love for each other. They clear paths for one another to try to make it possible for each to be living their fullest selves. Sometimes it means seasons of hardships – late nights fixing plumbing or seasons of second-shift, solo parenting. Because they don’t have “careers” someone might be tempted to believe they don’t work, but I disagree. You’ve limited the efforts of creating a good life to those with a bi-weekly paycheck.

You don’t have to despise the American Dream to be inspired by their lifestyle – you simply have to wish you lived so deeply true to your value system that you’re willing to make decisions based upon it. Everybody likes the notion of finding freedom from the rat race – few decide to take a hard right turn to find an escape route.

Browsing about Pinterest I find all kinds of pithy quotes about living life to the fullest and being true to yourself. I find those as a reflection of a deep unrest, an inspiration toward what a person wants to be and what they want from life. Chad and Angie don’t have time to pin it – they’re busy living it. You can’t talk to them for 5 minutes without understanding they live from their truest selves and the decisions they make match their highest priorities.

Dear, dear friends*, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!
(2 Corinthians 6:11-13, MSG)

The past 10 years I’ve watched them live into this truth. They live openly and expansively, allowing the deep, deep joy of true life flow into their home, their neighborhood, their school and their church. When an element seems meaningless or small, they discover a new path into a more spacious life. Taking this route has cemented a strong love. They walk not just arm-in-arm but fiercely by one another’s side.

Chad and Angie, here’s to another 10, 20 even 50 years of living your truest selves in the arms of the one who continues to reveal to you the Source of this great love and life.

*Michele translation. You’ll find Corinthians in the original.

When marriage doesn’t save

June 3, 2014 / Michele Minehart

High on my list of values sits “having a strong and healthy marriage”. Yet I know so little about what it takes to create it. I believe my own marriage is pretty good (not pretty good as in “meh, okay” but pretty good as in pretty darn good). I know many couples who seem to have a fire of affection for one another even amid toddlers. I watch my cousins live out marriages that support their partners and offer one another a kind of trust and freedom that I don’t see in other places. My parents and in-laws have set before us a model of faithfulness and love. I can spot good marriages, I just can’t prescribe them.

I see these relationships and deem them good from the outside. Yet I know my own from the inside and and wonder, “is this what it’s supposed to look like? Am I doing it right?” I watch other marriages from afar (like the one across the street) and wonder what happened 2 years ago that set them on this course?

While digging around in the gospels, I only find Jesus telling us how hard marriage really is. The pharisees questioned him on divorce and after Jesus gives his two cents the disciples decide that perhaps it’s better to not even get married at all. What a resounding endorsement for our fine institution.

I turned to the Old Testament to find the original writ of divorce came up empty. (It could be there. I was using a lackluster concordance.) I did, however, read some legal footnotes in Deuteronomy 24. Here Moses says that if a man divorces his woman because she is “displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her” (we’ll call that roomy when it comes to interpretation) the she’s free to marry another man. But if she ends up back on the market – due to divorce or death of her second spouse – her first husband cannot marry her. It’s detestable.

I have a hard time believing that love redeemed is detestable. But you know what is? A heart so wrapped up in finding the best thing out there that he misses the gift in his own bedroom. Yet once another man validates her worth, he decides “yes, why, she is quite wonderful, isn’t she?”

If you’re looking for the best spouse on the block, you can stop looking. I married him. JJ is patient when I’m flighty and grounded when I have my head in the clouds. He loves me when I’m pregnant and miserable and making everyone else miserable. When I feel like I’m drowning he pushes me toward dry ground. When it comes to my fears in marriage, very little sits on his shoulders.

What scares the bejebus out of me is the fact that he cannot save me from my own sin*. No amount of love or devotion that he can offer me will ever give me the 100% guarantee that I’ll stop looking for approval somewhere else. Our nature seems to be bent toward gratifying our own desires (which might be why adultery seems to be the highest risk factor of divorce), and I’m no different than the rest of humankind. That thought, no matter how great the marriage, is sobering. Even the best marriage cannot keep me from my temptation to put myself first.

Original photo by VinothChandar via Creative Commons

Instead, I must look to my responsibility for self-control. I have to wonder if adultery is the heightened version of a life already living for self-gratification, which seems to be the real problem. If so, far fewer marriages hit the rocks because of another woman and many more crack from the weight of getting what we want or the belief that we always should.

Marriage provides me an opportunity to practice daily the act of loving others as I love myself. When I stop looking at marriage as a way to fulfill me and begin to see it as a way to live with and love another, then I find myself fulfilled. But not without a lot of hard work and eating a little humble pie now and then. I suppose the key to happiness in marriage is finding a person who will lovingly wipe away those crumbs rather than shoving your face into a fuller bite.

*Sorry to use theological words. It’s the best term I could muster.

Love in a garage sale group

May 29, 2014 / Michele Minehart

My friends Kristy and Megan turned me toward the County Garage Sale trend at differing times, but now I regularly browse through the Facebook groups to see what’s offered that I ~~need~~ love. And, much like the rest of my life, it’s become a huge science experiment. Y’all, people are fascinating.

But now I’m sad.

First, there was this:

This one caught my eye first because it was about church and, on the whole, I seem to be about church. But the more I got to thinking about it, the more this post broke my heart.

Here was this person living through a difficult time. She decides that she needs to go to church to see if that won’t help – a noble and not always easy decision.

And she doesn’t know a single real-live person to ask where to go.

She asks a bunch of people who buy and sell junk together.

My friends, this is a problem.

It’s not a problem because the Garage Sale sites need to become our next marketing target – it’s a problem because the people going to the 109 churches of Miami County don’t know her personally, or not one of them has made it known to this woman that they do indeed attend and that she is welcome to join. Our circles don’t connect or even touch. The only place she can find someone who *might* go to church is on a garage sale site.

My science experiment moved forward a few weeks later:

Right there, among the Longaberger baskets, was a kind woman trying to help a family with children who had nothing. They needed food, clothes, toothpaste and all the very things we keep in stock because it’s on sale. And when looking for people to help contribute, the coordinator turned to: the garage sale site. Of course. Because people who sell crap are known among the world for helping the down and out. The church has no history there.

*Hangs head in shame.*

Finally, when my heart was already torn, a post stomped it into oblivion. It said, “are there any shelters in Troy for women and children?”

Until I joined a garage sale site, I didn’t realize how I surrounded myself with people who were just like me. I inadvertently thought we were all parents of toddlers who liked buying and eating local. I’ve realized I’m basically only around people who want to live into a better world and have the money to make decisions that will help them do it. We talk about our love for maxi skirts and disciplining kids and how hard it is to live your values. I wanted to believe we all have our “differences” but really, that comes down to meaningless stuff like if we were sprinkle-baptized or dunked, or maybe we choose to eat dairy-free instead of McDonalds.

Yesterday, along with these sites, revealed to me just how unlike Jesus I really am.

If all you do is love the loveable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

It’s not my lack of helping people unlike myself. It’s not even my good intention-paved road. It’s my lack of knowing people unlike myself that keeps me from living the gospel.

Michele Minehart

Page 76 of 312

Inspired to a good life

When marriage doesn’t save

Love in a garage sale group

Recent Posts

Read more, in your inbox